Friday, February 01, 2008

Of forks and roads

I don't know if it's a family joke, spawned in our blended family that had 4 teenagers at home, or a well known bit that has found a place in our life, but you know the one that goes -

"If you come to a fork in the road - take it - we're always short on forks."

Forks seem to be prominent in my life right now, Shawn just carved me this beautiful weaving fork from a very pretty wood that we had harvested on Foxbriar for firewood. It is so soft and smooth and has a greenish color.And the road of my life has been full of forks. I always try to either take all the paths at once and find a way to bounce back and forth between them or walk the middle ground. I hate having to decide to take just one, especially when they are mutually exclusive opportunities, with no guarantees of what you'll find at the end.

Our life is definitely the road less traveled, and there aren't a lot of maps or road signs to give direction. When I find a new road, I research it as much as I can, but sometimes you can't know what's around the bend without taking the path yourself. I really prefer roads that aren't one way, so that I can back-track to the main road after I see what is over that next hill.

Like yesterday, when I traveled the path of setting up an account on Amazon. This morning's research lead me to find even more things that pointed out this road just wasn't going to take us in the direction we wanted to go. Amazon was gracious about closing the account and it was easy for me to get back to my consideration of the roads in front of us, knowing that one was not right for now.

Other choices have not been so easy. There is an opportunity that I really want to be able to take advantage of coming up. It is a realistic possibility. But I needed to clear my calendar to make space for that possibility if I am going to put energy into following that path. That meant canceling things I really love doing and making the decision to close out some directions in my life.

Some of them I can hope that the road will loop back and let me pick them up again if the opportunity is not meant for me. Others will leave space open to that filled with new paths.

So, I'll be out hiking these new roads the next couple months and I'll share stories and quandries as I try to collect forks, rather than having to choose directions.

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About me

As a fiber artist and shepherd, my daily life is full of stories. The joy of helping lambs into this life gets woven into the newest shawl on my loom. Sorrows and hard times are spun away on a drop spindle. Some of the stories make it into print here - and other times, I am so busy just living this life that I can't sit down to write on a computer!